The Wing and Its Properties
 www.tech.purdue.edu/. ../airfoil.jpg The picture above shows a crossection of an airfoil. As you can see the airfoil is slightly cambered downward allowing air to pass of over and downward. The aileron located at the back of the airfoil allows the wing to increase of decrease its lift. It does this by tilting up, to increase lift, or tilting down to counteract the lift and creating a downward push. On an an airplane each wings aileron will work oppositely of the other to allow one wing to go up and the other to fall. This creates a turn.
The standard equation for lift is shown above. One can calculate how much lift a wing will produce by using the equation above. In this equation (Cl) is the wing coefficient, (r) is air density, (v) is the velocity the wing is traveling, and (A) is the surface area of the wing. This works well for most cases but as wing design becomes more complicated this equation becomes somewhat inaccurate. |
